with Britt Reints
Forget the 9 to 5; Full Time, All the Time is a blog about the mobile working life - when you have the freedom to work from anywhere and the responsibility of always having your smartphone turned on. Britt Reints works as a freelance writer while traveling fulltime in an RV with her husband and two kids. She explores balancing real-life bills with an unconventional work life, and finding time to maintain relationships with family and friends.
You can also find Britt at InPursuitOfHappiness.net.
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Here in the United States, today is Independence Day. In my family, it is also my husband’s birthday. To celebrate, we packed up the kids last weekend and drove three hours to my dad’s house. (Because doesn’t everyone want to celebrate their birthday with their inlaws?) We’ve been fishing, swimming and gorging on grilled meats - and that’s before the holiday officially arrives! We’ve also been working.
As usual, I’ve taken my job on the road with us. Jared has recently started working from the comfort of his laptop, joining me in my “full time, all the time” lifestyle for the moment. That means we’ve had to make two mobile offices in my dad’s home this week.
What does that look like?
I’ve set up shop in a recliner in the corner of the living room with my coffee on an end table beside me and my iPhone tucked in between the seat cushion and arm rest. My noise-cancelling headphones dangle around my neck when they aren’t perched atop my head. Jared oscillates between the loveseat next to me and the bed in the guest room, with a laptop propped on one knee and his new iPad propped on the other.
I’m sure we don’t look terribly productive or professional, but this is far from the strangest work environment I’ve staged for myself. (That honor probably goes to the nook in the back of a research library near the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Or maybe that Interstate rest stop.)
Of course, when people like me first take on the mobile lifestyle, we imagine that we’ll be working poolside or under a beach umbrella in the Caribbean. I confess that I’ve lived that fantasy once or twice, but more often than not my reality involves yoga pants and extension cords wrapped around coffee tables.
Still, as unglamorous as it might be, the variety of my less-than-ergonomic work stations has not ceased to amuse me. It makes me smile to think of the income I’m earning from coffee shop booths and borrowed couches. It serves as a constant reminder that life is rarely what it seems at first glance and that the cubicle is outdated.
It also suggests that office furniture is way overpriced.
What does your work space look like?
I think yoga pants and tangled extension cords are very glamorous, hahaha. I love being able to work anywhere. Once I learned some boundaries — like specifically not working on Saturdays and Sundays and just enjoying myself — I fell in love with it completely. Now I’m working on getting rid of my part-time job.
Liz | July 5th, 2012 at 9:17 am